1 December 2006

@misc@

Networking is one of the things I hated most at school (I mean computer networking, at computer school, not social networking — not that I’m much better at that one), so I’d need confirmation from more expert sources: should I understand that I could buy a small, $30 Ethernet switch, plug it in place of my old, dusty network hub whose ‘Collision’ LED keeps blinking like mad whenever I’m using anything, and it would work immediately like a charm and my whole local network would be orders of magnitude faster?

Because, right now, transferring files from one computer to the next is rather painful, and I can’t help but think that having that much collision can’t be a good thing.

I take that as evidence that Microsoft didn’t deliberately cripple their device, but were forced into it by their licensing agreements: they must have believed to deeply in the wifi sharing functionality (mwahaha) that, when PlaysForSure licensees refused to see their songs copied on other devices for three days or three plays (got to understand them, what a loss of revenue), Microsoft ended up having to split their offering rather than just give up on their, uh, killer feature.

I remember reading a blog post a couple days ago saying that there would be an uncontrollable frenzy if any Apple patent coming out by Christmas mentioned phone capabilities, even in passing. Well, I guess this is it: Apple requests a patent for the amazing idea of manufacturing a device with a material that’s transparent to radio frequencies.

2 December

@misc@

Geez — I spend a single day absorbed in my PHP duties, and I get 1,500 RSS items and 12 podcasts waiting for me.

And, for all that, not one bit of news I feel worthy of posting / linking / commenting here. Hurray for the web. (Seriously. The reason I write those bulleted posts covering an array of different news items each day is that I’m so sick of those tech blogs spamming your RSS aggregator because their writers are paid per post.)

Incidentally, I don’t understand why the iTunes team haven’t figured yet that they should have a dock badge counting new podcasts. (Oh wait, I know why — they’re too Windowsy to even know about dock badges.) I don’t feel like buying Docktopus (which I’m not even sure provides that feature, actually).

@misc@

In other news, you might or might not have noticed that I can’t seem to get decided on a font and font size for this blog.

3 December

@apple@

Those MacAppADay guys must have really thought this through: are they really just finding out two days after launch (and three months after beginning the hype campaign) that some people would mirror the special, unlimited builds, and that they might need to manage registration codes if they really want to limit the number of users as intended?

On the bright side, TuneX, the iTunes remote that was offered on day 1, was a good surprise. Today’s MailSteward Lite, however, reaches the limit of the system: I’m not going to trust my email to an application for which I’ll never be entitled to upgrades. In the case of a Mail.app companion, a few months away from Leopard’s release, that’s not much more than a free expiring demo.

Drive-in preserves the DVD’s original content protection. Drive-in allows you to play your [DVD] images on any computer that you own but does not allow you to share your images with others.

Don’t you just love it when a software developer thinks that crippling their software with iTunes-like usage restrictions will exempt them from a DMCA lawsuit? Here’s what’s going to happen: they are going to get sued, and nobody will buy their product — why the hell would you want to register a $50 app that will disappear from the face of the Earth as soon as the MPAA hears about it, when you could use an open-source program (which my interpretation of French law doesn’t allow me to name) to rip your DVDs into iTunes and do whatever you want with them?

6 December

@apple@

The wiimote is coming to OS X[via] (there were already similar news for Windows, but I’m obviously less interested). Now that promises to be much, much more interesting than all the MacBook motion sensor crap there’s been before.

Wiimote support absolutely needs to be one of Leopard’s top secret features.

@apple@

It’s Apple rumor week it seems (just as every other week). An ultrathin laptop, smaller than, and twice as expensive as the MacBook? Whatever — I hear there’s some kind of market for that. A tablet? That’s original. A gaming console and/or Mac games on the iTunes Store? Possibly, but at odds with Apple’s choice of a graphics chipset for the one Mac that’s most likely to be connected to an HDTV. The iPhone formally announced by Kevin Rose for the next MacWorld? Okay, on this one there’s something that puzzles me: two batteries. Ooh, genius, you can empty the MP3 player’s battery all you want, you’ll never be left stranded without phone capability! Yay!

What?

The cheapest, most efficient, most reliable way to be sure that your phone will always have power is to multiply by two the cost, space and risk of failure of batteries? Rather than, I don’t know, having a software setting to shut down the iPod part when the battery status reaches a certain level?

Two fricking separate batteries in a nano-sized phone, and everyone thinks it’s so cool it’s got to be real? Geez, are you that desperate?

9 December

@apple@

I guess I’m supposed to post about Midnight Inbox reaching 1.0, but I just don’t seem to care, no matter how pretty the screenshots are. As a matter of fact, I exported all my data from Yojimbo yesterday into a big folder on my desktop because I couldn’t stand it’s sluggishness anymore, and I’m getting tired of hoping for the next big thing in GTD software. It’s back to the Finder for me.

I don’t think there are many people here that don’t also read my personal weblog, where I already posted an announcement, but I might as well mention it in passing: if you looove my writing and the way I post reviews of some of the least uninteresting news every couple of days, and you like blogs written in Lucida Grande over a gray background with lots of rounded corners and drop shadows, and you’re interested in video games, and you read French, there’s a slim chance you might like the new blog I just launched: beware the frog. But, really, that’s only if you met all of those conditions.

It’s the first collborative weblog I launch — there’s just two of us so far, but we’re certainly planning to expand — and it’s also a bit stressful to be blogging side-by-side with an actual, real, professional journalist, but… well, it’s there, and it’s open, and it has RSS feeds that won’t swamp your aggregator, so why not subscribe? And also check it out in your browser every once in a while, because I’m quite happy with how the layout turned out.

12 December

@apple@

DualOsx allows you to use two mice, or graphics tablet, to have two mouse pointers on your screen simultaneously. Or so it says — the download only contains a readme file, and the video, while quite enticing, shows absolutely impossible functionality: I don’t know what level of hacking could make the Finder allow two concurrent drag-and-drops, but there is absolutely no way Photoshop could handle two brushes simultaneously drawing in different colors.

@apple@

Concept: Apple iServe. Now that I have a decent network switch and rediscover the joys of moving files from one computer to another, I love the idea of having a small Apple box with a couple big hard drives in RAID-1 array, shaped to fit snugly among your books and stuff — with automatic iTunes, iPhoto, etc. sync for your home network to boot. Yum yum.

@apple@

OS X Aqua to be replaced with Illuminous. As far as I can tell (the site appears to be a bit hammered right now), the originating blog is not a Crazy Apple Rumors Site knock-off. Illuminous. Serious rumor. Apple unveils the Illuminous interface.

It’s not that I particularly want to advertise the most ludicrous rumours, it’s just that one’s so funny I can’t not.

But seriously, passwords are getting better. I’m impressed that less than 4 percent were dictionary words and that the great majority were at least alphanumeric.

[Corporate employee passwords, on the other hand, are better] than 15 years ago, but not as good as MySpace users. Kids really are the future.

Also, if your password if one of the top twenty listed in the article (isn’t it illegal to publish what is originally stolen, very private data?), you better change it before someone uses that list to hack your account.

I’m not going to link to Gizmodo on that one, because I don’t believe it for a second, but if an iPhone isn’t introduced by Monday (Monday? an Apple product?) I’m sure their feed subscription numbers are going to feel the heat. You don’t mess with the Apple fanbois.

Everything on ZFS is “copy-on-write” meaning that the file system never overwrites live data and it leaves no windows of vulnerability. […] And everything on ZFS is checksummed meaning zero data corruption.

I doubt that Steve Jobs is going to announce that as one of those big Leopard secrets that they didn’t want Microsoft to copy (I can hardly imagine him being ecstatic about a new filesystem that’s, wow, more reliable), but, if confirmed, it’s big, really.

19 December

@phone@

Samsung’s new phone with “optical joystick”: the press release is quite unclear, but if that’s what I think it is — basically a mini trackpad that detects how your finger moves across the surface, which could indeed very easily be done with the same tiny hardware an optical mouse uses — then I’m rather pissed that Samsung might have patented that instead of, say, Sony-Ericsson.

21 December

I know that Adobe has had a hard time figuring out how to design a whole suite of icons for a while now (CS2’s icons were already widely criticized for being so generic and abstract) but I can’t believe they would just give up like this. I mean, they design software for graphics designers. I can understand them wanting to be more neutral, but graphics designers are supposed to grasp the importance of symbols and shapes in visual communication; and graphic application designers are grasp what matters to graphics designers.

24 December

It’s one thing for .Mac to suck in isolation. It’s another thing entirely for it to infect all your favorite applications. […]

These are otherwise excellent applications. I really don’t want to give them up. And even if I did, chances are good that their replacements would also use .Mac for syncing. Network syncing is an important feature, and .Mac has essentially ruined it on the Mac platform.

@apple@

Apple invents text-stroke and the world (or a very limited subset thereof, actually) wonders: what about Leopard’s visuals requires text outlines?

I’m not sure how that can actually be a good thing — even if the device’s processing power is sufficient, you’re at the very least trading a little battery life for a few kilobytes of storage space, aren’t you?

@apple@

Funny. I reinstalled OS X ages ago and only just realized I must have forgotten to disable the Caps Lock key again.

Guess I don’t accidentally hit it on this keyboard as often as I used to.

P.S. Uh… no. It’s just that the setting doesn’t seem to stick anymore.